Originally posted by
Marsupial at 11-1-2010 15:49
'pert, you might be interested in this New York Times article on how Cantonese use in America's Chinatowns is being supplanted by Mandarin:
In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin
http://www. ...
in San Francisco Chinatown and pretty much the whole city of SF and for the most part Oakland, it's still pretty solid 90+% Cantonese and Taishanese. However, in most of the other suburbs where there is a heavy Chinese presence, it's mostly Mandarin. I would say that if you took all the Chinese speakers in the SF Bay Area and asked them what their primary language was, it probably would be about 60% Mandarin, 40% Cantonese, with about 80% of the Cantonese ones also being able to speak Mandarin as well.
NYC Chinatown is probably more Fujianese more than anything because of all the illegals that harbor there.
LA is pretty much all Mandarin everywhere, because there never was a big Cantonese presence to begin with.
Vancouver - pretty much mostly Cantonese because of all the Hongkie immigration from the 90s'. Same goes for Toronto.